jurist military politician Soldier
Turney was born on September 27, 1827 at Jasper, Tennessee, the son of Hopkins L. Turney and Teresa Francis. His father was a prominent politician who was elected to the United States Senate in 1845 with the help of the Andrew Johnson-led "Immortal Thirteen. " Shortly after Peter's birth, the Turneys moved to Winchester, Tennessee.
He attended public schools in Franklin County and a private school in Nashville, and read law, initially with his father, and later (after his father was elected to the Senate) with Judge W. E. Venable.
At the age of seventeen he became a surveyor but soon abandoned this work to read law in his father's office.
Following his admission to the bar in 1848, he practised in partnership with his father until the latter's death in 1857.
Following the election of Lincoln in 1860, Turney became an active advocate of secession, and was one of the leaders in the attempt to secure a convention to take Tennessee out of the Union. When this proposal was rejected by popular vote in February 1861, he led the citizens of Franklin County in the adoption of an ordinance withdrawing their county from Tennessee and attaching it to Alabama. He at once raised a volunteer regiment and marched it to Virginia, where it was mustered into the Confederate service as the 16t Tennessee, with himself as colonel. He was attached to the Army of Northern Virginia, and served under "Stonewall" Jackson until the battle of Fredericksburg, December 13, 1862, when Turney was wounded.
On his recovery he was transferred to Florida, where he surrendered in May 1865. At the close of the war he resumed his law practice at Winchester, and soon gained political prominence through his opposition to the reconstruction program of Gov. William G. Brownlow. When the Democrats gained control of the state in 1870, he was elected a member of the supreme court and was reelected in 1878 and 1886, serving as chief justice from 1886 to 1893.
In his work as a judge he was described by a contemporary as "one who refuses to conform to custom and defies classification". He impressed his associates as a man of strong common sense with a clear perception of practical justice, who framed his opinions by going at once to the heart of a case and deciding it and then giving briefly his reasons with little citation of authorities. Although he had taken little active part in politics, he was known to be a Democrat of the conservative school, and therefore was selected by that element of his party to become its candidate for governor in 1892, with the hope that the party might be saved from the threatened domination of the agrarian movement.
He won the election and during his first term was able to preserve nominal harmony in the party, although he failed to appeal to the younger and rural element. As a result his candidacy for reelection in 1894 was a close contest in which H. Clay Evans , his Republican opponent, received a bare majority of the votes on the face of election returns.
The Democratic leaders at once raised a charge of fraud and demanded a recount by the legislature. A legislative investigating committee finally reported that an "honest count" gave the victory to Turney by a majority of over 2, 000 votes. As a result of the antipathy thus aroused, he was not considered again for public office and at the close of his term, in 1897, he returned to his home at Winchester, where he died.
As governor, Turney ended the state's controversial convict lease system and enacted other prison reform measures. His second term was marred by the 1894 gubernatorial election, which he won only after the state's Democratic-controlled legislature threw out thousands of votes for his opponent, Henry Clay Evans. In tribute to Turney's prison reform efforts, the Turney Center for Youthful Offenders (now the Turney Center Industrial Complex), which opened in 1971 in Hickman County, was named in his honor.
He was twice married: first, in 1851, to Cassandra Garner of Winchester, who died in 1857; and second, in 1858, to Hannah F. Graham of Marion County; by his first wife he had three children, and by his second, nine.
(October 3, 1797 – August 1, 1857) He was a Democratic U.S. Representative and United States Senator from Tennessee.
